Samsung’s vRAN is not Your Ordinary Cloud RAN

Cellular networks have evolved significantly over the years, supporting more capabilities, more users and devices at higher speeds, and providing more functionality than networks even a few years ago. The Radio Access Network (RAN) portion of cellular networks is one area where considerable change has been seen. Initially, there was Distributed RAN, where the entire base station — radios and a Baseband Unit (BBUs) — was located at the cell tower site. Then came Centralized RAN, also called Cloud RAN for a while, which allowed physical BBUs to be remotely situated from the cell site and shared amongst radios. Next came the virtualized RAN (vRAN), now sometimes confusingly called Cloud RAN, which is significantly different and far more potent than earlier Radio Access Networks.

vRAN offers extraordinary features to enable operators to introduce new services with ease and manage the network more efficiently

With vRAN, the RAN is transformed from being vendor and hardware-specific to software-based, able to reside on commercial off-the-shelf servers. The architecture is disaggregated and 100% virtual. The BBU functionality is split into two new components: virtualized Distributed Units (vDU) and virtualized Centralized Units (vCU). A vDU is often on-site with the radios, while a vCU is centralized and able to manage several vDUs. This setup allows the deployment of new services to be handled in less time and with fewer resources.

One of the significant benefits of vRAN is that it provides for network slicing – the ability to create and run multiple virtual networks on the same physical equipment, allowing operators to offer private networks with features crafted explicitly for individual enterprises, a potential new source of revenue.

vRAN provides for the automation of network features, such as dynamic scaling, which allows networks to add capacity and processing power on the fly when needed and use those same resources for other purposes, such as report generation, when not otherwise required.

Software-defined vRAN will inevitably improve at a much faster rate than the hardware-based networks as software updates can be performed in a fraction of the time needed to upgrade or replace hardware, a significant savings in labor and travel costs.

Samsung Leads the Way with vRAN

Samsung developed vRAN and was the first to bring it to major market on a wide-scale. Initially, launched in 2020, it became the first commercially available fully virtualized 5G RAN, 100 percent software-based, delivered end-to-end from a single vendor in 2021, with support for Massive MIMO radios on C-band(mid-band). Our vRAN is cloud-native, capable of running 2G, 4G, and 5G, and supports TDD or FDD technologies. It runs on many different architectures across North America, Europe, and Asia, with carrier-grade performance seen with multiple Tier 1 operators around the globe.

Samsung’s vRAN is O-RAN compliant and integrated with other vendors’ radios. We collaborate with customers, partners, and standards bodies to further the usage of network virtualization and are the only vendor offering a complete vRAN solution versus incumbents and new entrants.

You Get Far More with vRAN than Cloud RAN

vRAN was the next logical step in the evolution of the RAN, virtualizing specific functionality. Samsung’s vRAN is a cloud-native platform that can be customized to fulfill operator needs ranging from basic virtualization to complex cloud-native architectures. It is far more than simply Cloud RAN, bringing high performance, agility and proven capacity for operators with a software-centric approach. Service providers can plan their entire network more efficiently, deploy resources as needed quickly, and deploy innovative services in a fraction of the time. They can run 4G and 5G, even GSM 2G on the same network and create multiple ‘mini-networks,’ or slices, on the fly, to provide private networks to enterprises with specific capabilities. Samsung’s fully virtualized RAN runs in the cloud, offering all of the same Cloud RAN benefits plus so much more.